Reynaldo "Rey" Clemeña Ileto (born October 3, 1946) is a Filipino historian known for his seminal work Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 first published in 1979.
According to Ileto, the document's structure and content [i.e., a pattern of suffering and sacrifice ending in Christ's resurrection, from kadiliman (darkness) towards liwanag (light), from bayang sawi (forsaken land) towards a lost Eden] may have shaped how the common tao understood the Revolution—in effect, providing the Christianized peoples a "language for articulating its own values, ideals, and hopes of liberation.
[7] The book explores the cases of Hermano Pule and the Cofradía de San José (Confraternity of St. Joseph), a millenarian peasant movement in Luzon; revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan in 1896 (wherein which the leaders of the Katipunan, Ileto argues, may have used a pasyon rhetoric to attract followers to the nascent secret society); Emilio Aguinaldo's elite-led Republican revolution; Macario Sakay's Tagalog Republic and continued resistance to "benevolent assimilation"; and later peasant leader Felipe Salvador and the Santa Iglesia struggle in the early years of American occupation.
According to this view, it is the unequal relationship between the principalía (the provincial elites) and their poorer, dependent clients, kinship ties, and the cultural trait of utang-na-loob (debt of gratitude) which proved to be the "dominant modes of mobilization" during the revolution.
[1] Some historians such as Milagros C. Guerrero challenged the unconventional approach of Pasyon particularly in its use of non-traditional sources such as literary documents, poems, including religious folk traditions and rituals, previously ignored and marginalised in Philippine historiography.
[11] His father is former Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary and Vice Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Rafael Ileto.